Hi.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago on the Skywarn net about a project that I’ve been working on for the last half year, and I wanted to follow up with some details.

I’m running an Allstar node from my house in central Phoenix on 446.575. Attached to this node are a couple projects I’m running on a server that provide real-time weather information.

The first project is Skywarn Plus, which monitors and announces all the NWS weather alerts for Maricopa County. When each alert is issued, a short message is immediately announced on the node, and the complete alert can be read out by sending a DTMF code. Additionally, the alerts get pushed out over the internet to cell phones via Pushover, a free notification app.

The node looks for alerts once a minute, and most of the time I get updates from the Allstar node faster than I do from the NWS’s official iNWS application.

Secondly, I have a background processing software pipeline that takes the current KIWA radar image, processes, and zooms in on the Phoenix area, and saves it as a SSTV image.

You can get the node to transmit the latest image by giving your callsign, then sending DTMF *650 and unkeying. The image is transmitted in the PD120 format (the same image format that the space station uses for SSTV).

The image covers an area between Wickenburg on the NW corner, to around the San Tan Valley in the southeast. The base image data is the Composite Reflectivity product that everyone is used to.

You can view the image with an app called “Robot 36” found in the app store. Just in the options, set it to “Lock Mode > PD > PD120” and hold it to your radio’s speaker to copy the image. You can also use any SSTV radio software you may have.

In the future, I’d like to look at possibly automatically changing frequencies based on certain criteria. The radio I’m using  for the node is an all-band radio, and is fully controlled by software, so there’s a lot of opportunity for expansion there.

Also, I’d like to look at creating new SSTV images for the Velocity and derived imagery, and having code automatically alert or transmit an image when certain features are detected, like rain, strong winds, or possibly even rotation.

Let me know if you would like more information on any of this, or if you’d like to partner in some way. I’d like to make it available for more people to use, and possibly get it on a repeater somewhere. Feel free to try it out over the air, or connect to it via Allstar.

Allstar Node # 49804
Frequency 446.575 tone squelch 123hz simplex
Location: Just north of the State Capitol building in downtown Phoenix, 20w into an x200 up 2 meters.

Announce current Maricopa County Statement/Warning/Watch: *641
Send latest Maricopa County Composite image: *650

Thanks

-Dan Zubey N7NMD
(MAA634)